disdain to operate with their hands, or rather, as I think, because
they do not know how to perform operations. Indeed, this abuse is
so inveterate that the common people look upon it as impossible for
the same person to understand both surgery and medicine. It ought,
however, to be understood that no one can be a good physician who
has no idea of surgical operations, and that a surgeon is nothing
if ignorant of medicine. In a word, one must be familiar with both
departments of medicine."

Now Gilbert by the incorporation of many chapters on surgery in his
Compendium inculcates practically the same idea more than fifty years
before Lanfranchi, and may claim to be the earliest representative
of surgical teaching in England. Malgaigne, indeed, does not include
his name in the admirable sketch of medieval surgery with which he
introduces his edition of the works of Ambroise Pare, and says Gilbert
was no more a surgeon than Bernard Gordon. This is in a certain sense
true. Gilbert was certainly not an operative surgeon. But it needs
only a very superficial comparison of the Compendium of Gilbert with
the Lilium Medicinae of Gordon to establish the fact that the books
are entirely unlike. Indeed, it may be truthfully said that Gordon's
work does not contain a single chapter on surgery proper. His cases
involving surgical assistance are turned over at once, and with
little or no discussion, to those whom he calls "restauratores" or
"chirurgi," and his own responsibility thereupon ends.

We have no historical facts which demonstrate that Gilbert's
Compendium exercised any considerable influence upon the development
of surgery in England, but when we consider the depressed condition
of both medicine and surgery in his day, we should certainly emphasize
the clearness of vision which led our author to indicate the natural